Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Mapping Hurricane Florence

The National Hurricane Center has issued a Hurricane and Storm Surge warning for "the east coast of the United States from Edisto Beach, South Carolina northward to the North Carolina-Virginia border, including the Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds". At the time of writing Hurricane Florence is forecast to approach the coast of North Carolina or South Carolina on Thursday.

The National Hurricane Center has a series of maps showing the forecast track of Hurricane Florence. These include maps of the hurricane's forecast wind speed, wind arrival times, storm surge warnings and rainfall & flash flooding potential.

You can view the latest satellite imagery of Hurricane Florence at Tropical Tidbits. The Satellite Imagery section of Tropical Tidbits uses the latest satellite imagery from GOES-16 and GOES-17 to provide animated satellite views of tropical storms. This section also includes a tool which allows you to create an animated GIF from satellite imagery of any current storms.

You can view the storm in real-time using the Earth animated weather map. This real-time map uses weather data from the Global Forecast System to show current wind and wave patterns around the world. Earth's animated weather layers dramatically visualize the power of tropical storms like Hurricane Florence.

The National Storm Surge Hazard Map uses the National Hurricane Center's storm surge model to show storm surge flooding vulnerability for hurricane-prone coastal areas along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts and Puerto Rico. This is not a real-time map of forecast storm surges but a guide to areas which are in danger of storm surges during tropical storms. The map includes the option to view the storm surge vulnerability for different categories of storm. Hurricane Florence is expected to become a category 5 storm in the next 24 hours.

South Carolina has issued a number of mandatory evacuation orders for coastal counties. The South Carolina Emergency Management Division has maps of the evacuation zones along the coast. You can view these maps on the Know Your Zone section of the SCEMD website.